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Redirects

A redirect delivers to a visitor a page from a URL that is different from what the visitor actually requests. For example, a visitor requests the asset at http://brightspot.com/video-integrations. When detecting this incoming request, the Brightspot server actually sends the asset at http://brightspot.com/video-services.

Redirects are an important part of maintaining audience engagement and search-engine optimization. For example, audience engagement can suffer if a visitor clicks on a broken link. A visitor may have bookmarked one of your assets, and you subsequently changed the URL for that bookmarked asset. Without redirects, the visitor receives an Error 404 when opening the bookmark, and audience engagement suffers. When you add a redirect for the old URL, Brightspot sends to the visitor the asset at the new URL.

The same is true for search engines. A search engine may have indexed your site 30 days ago, and returns the URLs active at that time in its search results. If you subsequently changed the URL, a visitor clicking on a search result receives an Error 404. With a redirect in place, a visitor clicking on an old search result receives the asset at the new URL.

Caution

Redirects can have a temporary, negative impact on your SEO rankings, depending on the age, traffic, and links to the source URL. Before configuring redirections, try to determine if there will be a negative impact and to what extent.

Redirect types​

Asset redirects​

Asset redirects happen on the asset's content edit page within the URLs widget. There are a number of use cases for redirecting an individual asset URL, including:

  • You archived an asset, and therefore want its address to redirect visitors to a live page.
  • You want to update the slug of an asset, and therefore want the old slug to redirect to the new slug.

To make an asset redirect:

  1. Search for and open the asset you want to archive.
  2. In the side toolbar, click .
  3. In the URLs widget, copy the asset's permalink (for example, /brightspot-authoring-tools).
  4. Next to the asset's permalink, click .
  5. Click Publish.
Note

Since Brightspot requires each piece of content to have a unique URL, removing the URL in this way frees it to be used elsewhere (in this case, as a redirect).

  1. Next to the Publish button, click , then click Archive.

  2. Search for and open the destination asset to which you want to redirect the asset you archived.

  3. In the side toolbar, click .

  4. In the URLs widget, click Add URL.

  5. In the text field, paste the copied permalink from the archived asset.

  6. Underneath the text field, select the site to which the permalink is associated. If the destination asset belongs to the same site as the archived asset, retain the default.

  7. Select the kind of redirect you want. See URLs widget for details.

  8. Complete your site's workflow and publish the asset.

To update a slug:

  1. Search for and open the asset whose permalink you want to change.
  2. In the side toolbar, click .
  3. In the URLs widget, from the dropdown list underneath the permalink, select Redirect (Permanent) or Redirect (Temporary). (See URLs widget for details.)
  4. Click Add URL.
  5. In the text field, enter a slash (/) and then a new slug. The new slug must not already be assigned to an existing asset in the same site.
  6. From the drop-down list, select Permalink.
  7. Complete your site's workflow and publish the asset.

Site redirects​

Site redirects happen in an admin area in Brightspot. There are a number of use cases for redirecting a site URL, including:

  • Adding a vanity site name that points to your site's official name.
  • Changing a domain name.
  • Retiring a site in favor of a different one.
  • Changing a protocol, typically from http to https.

In all these cases, a visitor attempting to retrieve an asset from one domain-path combination is redirected to a different domain-path combination.

To add site redirect URLs:

  1. Ensure the URLs from which you are redirecting are not associated with a live site. Archive those sites, or remove the URLs from them.

  2. Click > Redirects > Site Redirects.

  3. Click New Site Redirect at the bottom left of the screen.

  4. In the Name field, enter a description of this redirect. If no name is entered, this field defaults to the site URL and the destination URL, separated by a ->.

  5. In the Site URLs field, enter the domain name and path from which you are redirecting, such as http://perfectsensedigital.com/video-integrations. Click to add multiple URLs.

  6. In the Destination field, enter the target domain name and path.

  7. Toggle on Transfer Matched Segments to have any path and query string after the incoming URL appear after the destination URL. For more information, see Transferring matched segments.

  8. Toggle on Temporary if you want the browser or search engine to treat the redirect as temporary. If set, the server returns an HTTP 302 temporary redirect; otherwise, it sends a 301 permanent redirect. (For details on the difference between permanent and temporary redirects, see URLs widget.)

  9. In the Query String field, select one of the following:

    • preserve—When redirecting, append an incoming query string to the URL in the Destination field.
    • ignore—When redirecting, do not append an incoming query string to the URL in the Destination field.
    • modify—Modify the incoming query string.

  10. Click Save.

Vanity redirects​

URLs can be long, sometimes extremely long, and difficult for visitors to memorize. A vanity URL is a URL that is much shorter, much easier to remember, and redirects the visitor to the actual asset. For example, your biggest seller in the digital store is at URL http://www.acme.com/store/products/plumbing/residential/ID-980-145-gadget. You can add a vanity URL http://www.acme.com/gadget that redirects to the original URL.

Vanity URL redirects are also useful if you have multiple assets from which you want to direct to a destination asset. Instead of having to add each to the destination asset's URLs widget, which can get long in such cases, you can direct multiple assets to a single destination using a vanity redirect.

To add vanity redirect URLs:

  1. Click > Redirects > Vanity URL Redirects.

  2. From the Create widget, click New Vanity URL Redirect.

  3. In the Name field, enter a description of this redirect. If no name is entered, this field defaults to the local URL and the destination URL, separated by a ->.

  4. In the Local URLs field, enter the path after the domain name in the URL from which you are redirecting. For example, if the source URL is http://brightspot.com/video-integrations, enter /video-integrations. Click to add multiple paths.

  5. In the Destination field, enter the redirect's target URL.

  6. Toggle on Temporary if you want the browser or search engine to treat the redirect as temporary. If set, the server returns an HTTP 302 temporary redirect; otherwise, it sends a 301 permanent redirect. (For details on the difference between permanent and temporary redirects, see URLs widget.)

  7. In the Query String field, select one of the following:

    • preserve—When redirecting, append an incoming query string to the URL in the Destination field.
    • ignore—When redirecting, do not append an incoming query string to the URL in the Destination field.
    • modify—Modify the incoming query string.

  8. Complete your site's workflow and publish the asset.

Wildcard redirects​

Wildcard redirects are useful when paths within your site change. Because Brightspot constructs paths from sections, paths change most often when a section name or a section hierarchy changes. In such cases, the redirect replaces an old path with a new one. For example, visitors who bookmarked the asset at http://brightspot.com/athletics/latest-scores are redirected to http://brightspot.com/sports/latest-scores.

To add wildcard redirects:

  1. Click > Redirects > Wildcard URL Redirects.

  2. Click New Wildcard Redirect on the bottom left.

  3. In the Name field, enter a description of this redirect. If no name is entered, this field defaults to the local URL and the destination URL, separated by a ->.

  4. In the Local URLs field, enter the path after the domain name in the URL from which you are redirecting. Add /* wildcards to represent an arbitrary path match. For example, if the source URL is http://brightspot.com/solutions/*, enter /solutions/*. Click to add multiple paths.

  5. In the Destination field, enter the redirect's target URL.

  6. Toggle on Temporary if you want the browser or search engine to treat the redirect as temporary. If set, the server returns an HTTP 302 temporary redirect; otherwise, it sends a 301 permanent redirect. (For details on the difference between permanent and temporary redirects, see URLs widget.)

  7. In the Query String field, select one of the following:

    • preserve—When redirecting, append an incoming query string to the URL in the Destination field.
    • ignore—When redirecting, do not append an incoming query string to the URL in the Destination field.
    • modify—Modify the incoming query string.

  8. Toggle on Transfer Matched Segments to have any path and query string after the incoming URL appear after the destination URL.

  9. In the Sites widget, from the Owner list, select the site to which this wildcard redirect applies.

  10. Complete your site's workflow and publish the asset.

Additional information​

Modifying query strings​

A query string is the portion of a URL following a question mark. For example, in the URL http://brightspot.com?article-id=12705, the query string is article-id=12705. Over time, a publication's architecture may change such that the query strings are changed or become obsolete entirely. You can manage the old incoming query strings so you can, for example, append the query string ?source=oldSite to keep track of where the user is coming from, what actions they took, and other information.

Transferring matched segments​

Toggling on Transfer Matched Segments ensures that the incoming path and the query string after the source URL are appended to the destination URL. For example, you have an existing subdomain for a sports section with the URL https://sports.brightspot.com, and you want to bring that subdomain as a path under the main company domain as https://brightspot.com/sports. In this case, any path or query string that appeared after https://sports.brightspot.com must now appear after https://brightspot.com/sports.

Incoming requests such as https://sports.brightspot.com/baseball are now redirected to https://brightspot.com/sports/baseball.

If Transfer Matched Segments is toggled off, the URL https://brightspot.com/sports/baseball redirects to the destination URL https://brightspot.com/sports (the path /baseball is dropped). Generally, the only reason to toggle off this switch is when you are restructuring a site, and the paths on the old domain do not match the paths on the new domain.